I don’t think anyone would strictly frown upon that (having in mind that you should probably keep it at $0.3, if I recall the number correctly, due to transaction fees and such). But you can also pirate the game as a trial and then pay what you feel you should. Personally, I’d rather opt for such an approach because I’d feel bad about messing up with the sales statistics and the average money spent per purchase. But that’s just my slight OCD talking.

Thanks for that heads up Duck! Normally I wouldn’t worry too much about the political beliefs of a developer, lord knows we couldn’t buy any of Cliffski’s games… ;-) But I think I’ll pass even on free-to-near-free here.

I mean to correct my ambiguity from the earlier post. Sure, it’s a controversial game, but that doesn’t mean you should judge it based on anything besides the game’s own merits, IMO. Whether you agree with the developer or not, I suggest that you do not factor anyone’s views into your buying decision on this game.

Also, I want to point out that he’s made well-thought-out clarification statements on that hate-filled comment thread that showed that he wasn’t the bigoted straw man everyone was making him out to be, and yet it was met only with “lol u h8 gays u suk homophobe”.

Frankly, I agree with the guy named “blank” in that comment thread. That’s why I said “double standards ahoy”, as he pointed out the obvious double standard that people were using in that thread against the developer. What a shame that a movement claiming to be the victims of hate are so astoundingly hateful towards those who do not agree with them 100%.

Whoaaah!
Thanks for the heads up, I nearly payed $10 and bought a t-shirt.
I mean I get that you’re saying not to judge something by it’s creator, but seeing as prop 8 is something that I hold quite strong beliefs against (being of the bended persuasion myself)
I think I’ll have to pass, lest the gentlemen make but one red cent out of my own hypocrisy.

I just had a read of Mike Smith’s response the Duck gestured at and I think it’s probably worth inserting into this discussion.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to be persecuted constantly, either for your sexual preference or chemical makeup. I think any of these hate crimes are inexcusable! Hate is a terrible thing that only destroys and makes life miserable. Denying people freedoms based on behaviors that are not illegal is also completely unacceptable.

I have nothing against homosexuals. I have members of my family that are homosexual. They are part of our family just like the ones who are not. I have friends that may or may not be homosexual. I don’t know, I don’t care. I don’t bother to ask because it’s not important to our friendship.

Not all supporters of Prop 8 are homophobic. I am a huge supporter of the traditional family. If you wanted to go ahead and take away any “tax break” or “legal benefit” from being technically “married”. Or wanted to apply those benefits to all people that asked for them, that’s fine.

I believe the family unit with a loving father and mother that take good care of their children is crucial to society. The more that unit is broken up via divorce, children out of wed lock, redefining marriage to something else, etc, the more unhappiness and instability will propagate through society.

But these are my beliefs that I hold sacred. These are what drive me to support different things. Not hate. I would love to have a solution that would make both the supporters of families and the homosexual community happy. All this hate and fighting is no good.

You can argue and debate all you want about what is socially right and what isn’t, but hate on either side of the debate is always wrong.

That’s all I have to say. I don’t want to hold anything against anyone for their comments. Let’s just drop this topic and get back to thing we have in common, the thing that would make us all instant friends if we were to see each other face to face. indie games.

Thanks.

Now that doesn’t seem bigoted to me. So he thinks legally binding heterosexual unions are so social vital they deserve to maintain their monopoly on the term marriage. That seems like a point of semantics backed up by some, shall we say, controversial social theories. I think there are stronger argument against his position but that is by the by. Maybe most people who hold those social theories are bigots who hold them because they’re simply prejudiced against homosexual relationships and can’t believe they can produce a healthy family environment. However I don’t feel there is is such strong evidence against such theories that we can safely assume that anyone who holds such a theory has such a motivation. Bigotry isn’t the only reason one could possibly hold that view, one could hold that view in an intellectually honest fashion so I don’t think it’s fair to condemn him as a bigot just because he holds that view.

Seems like in cases of accusations of bigotry what the person says in response to the accusation is very noteworthy. Consider Gillian Duffy, when accused of bigotry she was blind not just to her own xenophobia but to that of others who hold similar views. She couldn’t understand why anyone would consider that she might be at fault and reacted by simple rejection of the insult rather than presenting any form of coherent reply, at least in the coverage I saw. I conclude from that that Gillian Duffy is a unreasoning bigot. Mike Smith on the other hand seems to have a good grasp of what would constitute bigotry, denies that those are his views and presents a fairly reasonable case for his viewpoint. I can’t see any reason not to take his word for his reasons so I don’t believe he’s a bigot.

I happen to disagree with him but he’s presented a reasonable enough viewpoint that I’d be happy to debate the merits of Prop 8 with him because I believe our disagreement might well be rooted in differences of social theory rather than brute prejudice.

It is bigoted, I’m not quite sure how his response was meant to make him not sound bigoted. He basically says he doesn’t like the idea of it so they shouldn’t be able to get married. Also, straight couples are more likely to get divorced than same gender couples.
I guess this just gets on my tits so much because I happen to know a gay couple with children and they are amazing parents, especially as the children are adopted from straight families that abused them.
I apologise for my rant.

It’s unethical to draw lines in the sand, it creates an “us vs them” mentality, which is what I got from him. It just felt insidious, it’s like a racist who’s doing all they can to hide their rampant, raging racism. “I’m sorry, I don’t hate you, you’re just one of them and I don’t believe you deserve equal rights to us.” The end result is that in the perfect world of a mind like that, people like myself, gay people, would end up second class citizens purely by merit of being gay.

By adopting a viewpoint like the one he holds, he has to also realise that he wants this, he’s drawing the line in the sand, and he’s saying that I represent us and what we can have, these are my beliefs, and your wants are irrelevant, I shall now dictate to them what they can have, which won’t be the same rights as those upheld for us, of course.

When it comes to civil rights as a human being, you’d hope that a well-balanced human being would think there’s only us, not us vs them. Us being all races, gay, straight, lesbian, no matter what your culture, subculture, belief, religion, or whatever else. We all deserve the same rights, and no matter which way you slice it, and no matter how you try to sugar-coat it, drawing a line in the sand and trying to relegate lesser rights to a group of people is bigoted by the very definition of the word.

Looking up bigoted on Wiktionary I get this: “One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.”

That’s the us vs them scenario right there, it’s showing preferential treatment to one’s own group, and it’s being intolerant of those who aren’t of that group. The developer believes that straight families are the only functional families, and that doesn’t include homosexuals, he’s said as much and that he believes this to be true, quite strongly. Therefore, he’s intolerant of homosexuals sharing the same rights as his group, because then they might be considered as real people and not just them. Good lord, can’t have that.

Some people are pretty decent at hiding their own bigotry, and so many people are bigots to a degree, but bigotry in the case of civil liberties, laws, and rights I don’t like. It’s my belief that we are one race, humanity, and we should all be entitled to the same as everyone else, no better and no worse. Gays have just as much of a right to marriage as anyone else, regardless of someone’s intolerance thereof.

I suppose if that intolerance was warranted, perhaps based on evidence that homosexuals make good parents, then I could understand it. However, there’s no evidence to back that up. You could search high and low for an example of a bad home environment where the parents of a kid (or kids) are homosexual and you won’t find anything. There is, of course, plenty of stories about how homosexuals seem to be great parents. So the end result of this is that gay people are worthy and functional parents, and there’s no practical basis in logic or reason to deny them the rights of family.

So my conclusion is that the developer is very bigoted in regards to civil rights. Silver tongued, certainly, but a silver tongue never excused politicians from bigotry, and it shouldn’t excuse indie developers, either.

I have to agree with Wulf and DrGonzo, it all just comes across as a very pretty way of saying “gays don’t deserve the same rights as the rest of us.”

I have a fundamental problem voluntarily giving money to folks whose views I find distasteful, certainly I try to avoid it in the case of luxury items like entertainment. I’ve had something of an issue with this with Stardock/Brad Wardell but while I disagree with him a lot he has never, to my knowledge, been a advocate of bigotry or an active supporter of bigoted legislation. There’s a line, there. There’s also the issue that Stardock is a large company whose work is the product of many people and whose profits go towards many people, so it’s not quite so direct as contributing money to a game made by a single person.

How did you manage to mix up “one’s own money, and what one spends it on, based upon one’s sensibilities, choices, and personal preferences” with “dictating absolutely to another individual what they can or can’t spend their money on according to one’s own sensibilities, choices, and personal preferences, all of which may be different too and might conflict with theirs”? Those two seem fairly damn different to me, with the latter being unethical as well.

What I do with my own money is my business, what someone else does with their money is theirs. No one here is telling anyone what to do with their money, and the only reason this came up is so that people can make an informed decision. It’s a straw man to try to present an argument based around the concept of peer pressure, since no one’s saying “this is what you should do with your money”. Instead, people are saying “this is what I think, and this is what I’m going to do with my money”.

Speaking of strawmen, I’m quite certain that nowhere in my post did I suggest even slightly that anyone told me what to do with my money. I’m just saying you gave me an idea. Why should my money go to someone who supports an idea I don’t approve of, regardless of whether that idea is part of a commercial transaction?

Well my interpretation his viewpoint is he’s advocating a semantic distinction between heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage and claiming only the former should be correctly termed ‘marriage’. The other semantic point he seems to make are defining a ‘family unit’ as comprising a father, mother and children and also refers to ‘the traditional family’. I think we can probably assume he uses, ‘family’, ‘family unit’ and ‘traditional family’ interchangeably.

He clearly states that he feels his ‘traditional family’ is crucial to society. I think that’s the first point on which he can be meaningfully disagreed with but the evidence isn’t actually that good either way. I mean sure we know some heterosexualcentric families are great and some of them are shit and I think we know the same is true of homosexualcentric families. Seems reasonable to me to guess that an abundance of homosexualcentric families could fulfil the same social roll as the current abundance of heterosexualcentric families. However the homosexualcentric family is a recent innovation in western society so the social experiment is very much in it’s infancy so the data isn’t really in yet because this is really an issue of grand scale sociology that needs to be measured though statistics rather than case studies. So I think there is still room for theorists who hold that homosexualcentric families can’t serve quite the same roll as heterosexualcentric families and the arguments for and against that aren’t totally trivial. I think the big mistake he’s making at this point is somehow linking an increase in homosexualcentric families with a decrease in good heterosexualcentric families, that seems incredibly tenuous to me.

Now he clearly sees a significant link between his first semantic point regarding the definition of ‘marriage’ and a decrease in quantity and quality of heterosexualcentric families. Now he probably has a point regarding quantity. Giving equal semantic footing to heterosexualcentric and homosexualcentric families would probably result in fewer bisexuals (I actually believe everyone is bisexual but I’ll try to leave that point moot) with a homosexual preference feeling forced into less than ideal heterosexualcentric marriages by social convention whoever that does rather strike against the idea that it will decrease the quality of heterosexualcentric families but I suspect he’s simply missing that point. The other point I suspect he’s either missing or underestimating the importance of is the fact that the sort of semantic discrimination he’s in favour of is ultimately divisive and breeds the homophobia and hatred he claims to be against.

So assuming that is his position then of course he sees a distinction between zealous supporters of what he calls families and the homosexual community because he’s essentially willing to advocate semantic discrimination against the homosexual community in order to give semantic protection to the stereotype of the heterosexualcentric family.

Okay so how can I defend him as not being a bigot? Firstly he might just be stupid, many people are, he might not see that the semantic discrimination will also be damaging. He might see his side of the argument but at the same time believe that it’s just a word so whether they call it marriage or civil partnership or whatever won’t have a big impact on homosexuals. Secondly he could believe that the damaging effects are objectively a price worth paying. That the benefits to society from discrimination outweigh it’s costs. Most plausibly he could be underestimating the damaging effects of semantic discrimination and then consider that small price to be objectively worth paying. In my view he’s only a bigot if he believes this stuff because he himself is heterosexual and is being influences by some stupid ‘us and them’ prejudice. I don’t think that’s proven.

Yeah, I admit he’s most likely quite prejudiced but I for my part will reserve serious condemnation and the term bigot for people who are outwardly comfortable with their prejudices. Call it a silver tongue if you like but at least people who outwardly condemn prejudice are doing something to fight against the social acceptability of prejudice (which is a huge problem) even if what they politically advocate is inconsistent with that and undoes that good work. I’d certainly think much much worse of him if he said “Yeah, I was against proposition 8 because homosexuals are morally degenerate scum who should be locked up and/or chemically castrated.”

If you’re being serious–and I don’t think you are–then I’ll just say that I don’t think you should have the right to tell someone in your organisation how to spend their money. If you look at your post, that’s what you said. Basically, by firing one person for spending their money on something they desire, you’re holding the fear of that over the other workers, like the Sword of Damocles, ready to fall on anyone you disagree with. Therein, you’re dictating to the other workers what they can and cannot spend their money on.

I think that that’s unethical, and I care not whether it has to do with commercial transactions or not. I mean, look at your post:

“You guys have inspired me. Tomorrow, I’m going to do some subtle hunting around my company to find someone who’s used their money to support something I don’t like. And then I’m going to fire them.”

You didn’t say ‘my money’, implying the money of the company, or implying that they’re using personal funds, you said ‘their money‘. This implies that you would fire someone based on how they’d spend their earnings, and I think that’s unethical. This brings us to the conclusion of your post being exactly like I read it as. If you’d said ‘my money’, it would have meant something different all together. But the difference between ‘my money’ and ‘their money’ is the reason for my post.

Let’s have a look at my post:

“How did you manage to mix up “one’s own money, and what one spends it on, based upon one’s sensibilities, choices, and personal preferences” with “dictating absolutely to another individual what they can or can’t spend their money on according to one’s own sensibilities, choices, and personal preferences, all of which may be different too and might conflict with theirs”? Those two seem fairly damn different to me, with the latter being unethical as well.”

This is completely accurate, because you said you were going to fire someone for how they spent their money thus making your other workers wary of spending their money in the same way. Therefore, this part of the post is completely correct due to the difference between ‘my money’ and ‘their money’.

Again, if you had implied your money, or the money of your company, then my post would be incorrect.

This is what I didn’t like, because you’re trying to taint something and make it look unethical by claiming an ‘idea’ which is unethical. If someone chooses to spend or not to spend their money based upon their sensibilities, then that’s their own business. If you dictate to someone else, then that’s something else entirely. So we’re left with two possibilities: Either I was correct in the first place, and you’re trolling, or you’re an unethical individual who wants to be able to use the position of other people as rationale for enacting dubious ideas.

If you want to fire someone in your company based on a completely arbitrary basis, then you shouldn’t say it was inspired by anything we said, because it’s not. That would just be a cheap excuse just to fire someone because you felt like it, nothing more, nothing less.

Again, I’ll raise the point that we were all talking about what we thought, individually, and what each of us was respectively going to do with our own money. So how did we–by making purchases based upon our own sensibilities–inspire you to go and sack someone in your company for purchasing something (with their own money) that would offend your sensibilities? It’s nonsense.

That brings me to the second part of my post.

“What I do with my own money is my business, what someone else does with their money is theirs. No one here is telling anyone what to do with their money, and the only reason this came up is so that people can make an informed decision. It’s a straw man to try to present an argument based around the concept of peer pressure, since no one’s saying “this is what you should do with your money”. Instead, people are saying “this is what I think, and this is what I’m going to do with my money”.”

This is also correct if you’re creating an argument that we inspired you to arbitrarily sack someone in your company.

[Warning: This post may be a bit NSFW, but it’s the best way I could think of expressing how I feel about this particular topic.]

Augh. You had to pull the bisexual card, and that makes me question your motives as to whether you actually support him or not, and whether this is a clever way of making excuses for something that you have a little too much empathy for.

I really hate it when someone pulls the bisexual card, because it all centres around the belief of people who bash gays that homosexuality is a choice rather than something someone is born with and has to live with. If people are bisexual, then it means that a person can pick their partner because they are capable of being sexually attracted to either gender.

As a gay person with life experience in the field I can tell you that this is simply not the case, because I find the notion of sex with a female as repugnant as covering myself in shit. Why put it that way? Hey, some people like scat, but just because some people are into scat, and some people can be into scat, it doesn’t mean that everyone is secretly into scat, which is the same sort of proposition.

I’m gay, I can’t help it, and I’ll always be attracted to males, and I feel really frustrated by the idea that it’s a choice. It’s like someone who’s into scat telling me that, yes, I’m secretly into scat, I just have to open my mind to it and within an hour or two, I’d be loving it! Except… no, no I wouldn’t. I don’t do scat. I’d throw up. Many, many times.

So it’s not a choice for me, I really do feel it’s something that’s hard-coded, and just because bisexual people exist (and I acknowledge that, I feel that someone can be gay, straight, or bisexual in a hard-coded way), it doesn’t mean that all people are bisexual. If you’re bisexual then you might not understand this, but then, the fan of scat wouldn’t understand why people wouldn’t want to cover themselves in shit. Same principle.

Duck, I would normally judge a game on only its merits – unless – the developer publicly states his or her opinion on hot button topics. I’m not going to argue about his beliefs here, why I think he is wrong, or if I believe he is bigoted or not. This isn’t really the venue and this type of discussion rarely goes anywhere good.

The big issue is that I wouldn’t want my money to go to a person who I known may use that money to support things with which I don’t agree. In many cases, ignorance is bliss, so developers would be wise not to mix personal belief with business. By making a public stance on his game development blog about this, he as much as said that our money would go to funding his political agenda.

I would also say that the above should fully read the cited article regarding Bard Wardell and Fox News. His justification wasn’t in defending Glenn Beck, but rather at irritation that UPS would use their considerable clout in the shipping industry to force the media to do something. While I’m no fan of Fox News or Glenn Beck, I have to agree – cut advertising but if Fox is willing to pay for service, there needs to be good justification for refusing them service.

Okay steady on there. I think you’re reading rather too much into one sentence of my quite extensive reply. Let me be quite clear: I don’t support his viewpoint and I don’t support proposition 8. I don’t see why you’d want to attribute that viewpoint to me just because I’m bisexual and my experience from talking to my friends, both gay and straight, that know and trust me have discussed the matter with me in confidence is that most other people are as well. That seems like a completely knee jerk reaction just because I used the word ‘bisexual’ which I sorry but that’s just dumb as custard because bisexuality exists, is common and is very relevant to this discussion. The move from many or even all people are bisexual to homosexuality is a choice is completely bullshit and I’m quite offended that you seem to be ascribing that view to me when that isn’t something I even came close to saying and you clearly agree that I would be wrong to believe that. You’re not reading me charitably and you’re ascribing views to me that I’m not expressing and do not hold.

Now I say I’m bisexual and I think I’m right to assert that because I am attracted to some men. However I’m also attracted to most young women to some extent and I’d certainly rather be with an averagely attractive woman than an averagely attractive man any day of the week to the extent that I’m not interested in pursuing a homosexual relationship and when I’m not discussing the details of my sexuality I identify myself as heterosexual. I’d say that being almost entirely heterosexual isn’t a choice for me even though I have some bisexual tendencies. However if I lived in a society that condemned heterosexuality and I was expected to me to marry someone of my own sex then I’d probably be a lot more inclined to seek to enter into what for me would be a less than ideal homosexual relationship and eventual marriage. I believe and I have very very good reason to believe that there are people who are similarly bisexual to me but who’s strong preference is for members of their own sex. I’d say that homosexuality isn’t a choice for them but it seems very likely that since many sections of society still condemn homosexuality and expect people to enter into heterosexual marriages that many such people are still pushed into entering into heterosexual relationships and marriages. I mean this isn’t even controversial is it? I mean we hear about men in public life who have done this all the damn time when some crappy tabloid starts digging about in their personal lives and finds out that in spite of being married with 2.4 children they’ve been carry on a secret homosexual love affair.

Now sure maybe you have such a strong sexual preference that you would never have been pushed into relationship with a woman if the idea of having sex with any woman is as repugnant to you as you say but that really isn’t relevant to anything I was actually saying. Whether there are people with absolute sexual preferences was an entirely moot point in my argument. I even said as much when I brought it up and you’ve said nothing that looks anything like an argument for its relevance.

I wasn’t sure about this one, but I’ve given it a shot! I wish I’d seen that trailer sooner, because it does look quite fun, in a sort of hazy, look-at-the-colooours-maaan way. I can’t say I’m adverse to that sort of fun.

I wish I hadn’t thrown money at this, now. I like supporting indie devs, and all, but I can’t condone the lack of ethics by way of the developer. I’ll be more careful in future. For now I’m just considering it lost money.

It’s only a double standard if you’re an idiot. His whole argument is based around a faulty concept (homosexuality as a choice), and trying to claim pointing out bigotry is bigotry itself (it’s not). I agree that removing the game from the database because the creator is a bigot is stupid, but there’s no double standard in refusing to support him because of his backwards views.

“His whole argument is based around a faulty concept (homosexuality as a choice)”

Can you back that up with a source because I can’t immediately see any justification for that assertion? It actually seems quite counter to what I’ve read from him on the matter and I can’t see any reason to suspect him of interllectual dishonesty. Well aside from the fact he’s wrong of course but we can’t very well go around claiming everyone I disagree with must be intellectual dishonest bigots now can we?

I believe he is getting muddled up with a guy/idiot in the comments thread called ‘blank’.
“I mean, one of the biggest arguments behind homosexuality is freedom of choice. This guy chooses not to support homosexuality. So you bash him?”

I believe gay marriage will happen anyway, no matter how much some people huff and puff. It’s just that the US is lagging a bit behind the civilised parts of the world. And thanks to the internet this man’s opinions will be saved for decades to come and we’ll all be able to make fun of him then. He may get a few dollars from me, but I’ll get to point and laugh for eternity.

It happened just a few weeks ago here in Portugal and just a couple of days after the Pope’s visit.
And being the case we aren’t exactly a paragon of anti-prejudice in this country, I would say that you are absolutely right. It will happen inevitably. And future generations will look back and wonder what did took us so long to come out of our retarded mindset.

It has to happen. I think that no one with a decent head on their shoulders is going to support the bigotry of not wanting to permit gay marriages, it’s a civil liberty and equal rights should be all that matters. I’m not the sort of gay who thinks that every straight person is a bigot, because goodness knows I have straight friends who’ve supported me through thick and thin. In the end, if a lot of good people make a stand against inequality and unfairness, things will change.

History has proved this to be true thousands of times in the past, and it will continue to be a truth for all of us. If there’s unfairness and inequality, then decent people will do whatever they can to combat that.

Yes, we must punish the unbeliever. His thoughts are doubleplusungood. Anyone who does not agree with us is obviously a bigot, for we have goodthink, and no one else does. We know this because minitrue tells us so. Perhaps if we send him to miniluv, he too will have goodthink. But perhaps he is beyond saving.

But this a debate about rights that are part of most countries constitutions and a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is about Fundamental Rights. And anyone, but absolutely anyone, who does not respect our fundamental rights is not deserving of my business, my care or consideration.

In the case of human rights, yes. Anyone who doesn’t agree with them is a bigot, or worse. The only allowance I’m willing to give is to religious thinking, because of their dogmatic approach to our daily lives. But even there, I will strongly protest against their antagonist position. And have no doubt, that even them will eventually move with the times. More slowly and much later. But like they have always been doing.

Do we have to come up with another, nastier, more apt word for it? Any ideas?

Really though, anyone who says ‘us, we have these rights’ and ‘them, they are not entitled to these rights because they are not us’ is being a bigot. I mean, quoth the Meerkat: Simples! It’s not a hard thing to understand. People want equal rights, the only reason not to grant people equal rights is simply because you don’t like them. If you want to deny a group of people rights because you don’t like them, it’s bigotry.

But indeed… just look at this outcry. We can’t call bigots bigots? What’s next? Maybe we’ll get to the point where it’s politically incorrect to call murderers murderers, because they’re disenfranchised with life and misguided, and they don’t deserved to be punished with a derogatory word. :p

Really though, anyone who says ‘us, we have these rights’ and ‘them, they are not entitled to these rights because they are not us’ is being a bigot.

Sure but that isn’t what he said. Why don’t you argue against what he actually said rather than setting him up as a strawman. I mean it’s not like what he actually said isn’t also clearly wrong.

People want equal rights, the only reason not to grant people equal rights is simply because you don’t like them. If you want to deny a group of people rights because you don’t like them, it’s bigotry.

So the only reason we deny an equal right to freedom to rapists and murders is because we don’t like them? Here was I thinking it was because we considered offering an equal right to freedom to be less important than the protection of society from rapists and murders. I guess if you don’t believe that then that means you either don’t believe rapists and murders should be imprisoned or you wish to deny them equal rights just because you don’t like them and you are by your own definition a bigot.

“Sure but that isn’t what he said. Why don’t you argue against what he actually said rather than setting him up as a strawman. I mean it’s not like what he actually said isn’t also clearly wrong.”

Because it’s what he said from my perspective, support of Proposition 8 says everything by itself.

You and I see things differently, here. I feel a hell of a lot more insulted by it. From my perspective, calling straw-man is completely fallacious, because I only said what I got from him. He supports a ‘traditional family’ which is ‘us’, a ‘traditional family’ cannot include homosexuals, which is ‘them’. You can call straw-man, or you can pull out just about any other fallacy that you like, but it doesn’t make it true. He’s clearly saying ‘us vs them’. At least, I think he is.

We’ll have to disagree. But from my perspective, I’m right and there are no straw-men here.

“So the only reason we deny an equal right to freedom to rapists and murders is because we don’t like them?”

Yes, actually. Equal rights means the same right to go to jail if you break the law, I thought you would’ve grasped that. But homosexuals aren’t breaking the law by being homosexual, unless you want to make a case for that. Are you making a case that homosexuals are breaking the law by being homosexual? It sounds to me like that’s what you’re doing.

“Here was I thinking it was because we considered offering an equal right to freedom to be less important than the protection of society from rapists and murders. I guess if you don’t believe that then that means you either don’t believe rapists and murders should be imprisoned or you wish to deny them equal rights just because you don’t like them and you are by your own definition a bigot.”

Or you could just be setting me up as a straw-man. Which you’re currently doing. I like that.

Then again, you’re also implying that homosexuals are the same as rapists and murderers.

But Wulf you didn’t get it from what he said, you got it from what you take one of his beliefs to imply without looking at his reasons. He didn’t say that so attacking him for saying that just makes you look reactionary and unwilling to engage with his position. He even said that his family does include homosexuals which isn’t a great point but it is something you have to reply to before you start painting his position as simply ‘us’ and ‘them’. I think we will have to disagree which I find somewhat sad because you just don’t seem to be able to engage with this particular man and what he’s saying rather than just your stereotype of the sort of person who opposed proposition 8.

The right to go to prison if you break the law is a bullshit right. Laws have to be worked out on the basis of rights and morals if they are to have any legitimacy. You can’t say these are the laws now lets work out the right and morals because the law can be clearly morally wrong as they were before homosexuality was legalised. No, we infringe on the right to freedom of rapists and murders because there are good reasons for doing so not because we don’t like them. Heck, lets forget rapists and murders and talk about the dangerously mentally ill, we infringe on their right to freedom as well and not because we don’t like them (I hope) but because it is a practical necessity for the protection of society.

“Are you making a case that homosexuals are breaking the law by being homosexual? It sounds to me like that’s what you’re doing.”

I honestly don’t know if you’re serious or not. After you misinterpreted my bisexual remark so badly I can half believe you actually believe this which is truly scary. No, that isn’t what I was doing.

“Then again, you’re also implying that homosexuals are the same as rapists and murderers.“

I think this game is lots of fun. It’s like a cross between Magic Carpet and the Delphi Sea Reaper section of Giants. (It also looks a little bit like Giants, which is a plus in my book.)

It’s a proper superhero game. The jumping and the super speed and being able to raise and destroy terrain all feel like what’s in my head when I read comic books. It reminds me of the feeling I got playing Giants way back when – it was one of the first games to make me feel like a superhero (the Spider-Man games, for instance, didn’t really capture that feeling of speed and power and freedom until Spider-Man 2).

Also, I love how you people are willing to boycott some dude for having wrong opinions about gays (when there’s no evidence he’s actually *done* anything to harm homosexuals), but are perfectly willing to give your money to companies like EA, Activision and Ubisoft who actually do evil stuff like make programmers work in sweatshop conditions, use monopolistic tactics to hurt smaller developers, and kill babies with DRM.

Well he has publicly supported semantic discrimination against homosexuals. Such support is socially damaging as it promotes the idea that such discrimination is acceptable. That is in the end very harmful to homosexuals since the hatred, discrimination and violence against homosexuals is in the end rooted in exactly the sort of social prejudice that he is in his small way helping to maintain. The damage EA, Activision and Ubisoft do to their employees and the games industry is in the end very small fry compared to the extremely damaging effects of homophobia.

Basically, no matter which way you slice it, supporting Proposition 8 is saying that homosexuals are inferior as humans, somehow, we’re not homo sapiens any more just because we’re homo, but we’re something less. These lesser creatures, homosexuals, can’t put together a successful family, we can’t marry, adopt kids, and serve the same role in society as a straight family because we’re lesser creatures.

That’s what I get from him and anyone who’d support Proposition 8. I’ve been told, quite directly, that I’m an inferior creature, of a caste of inferior creatures, compared to a supposedly better caste of people. After that, I’m supposed to think it’s okay to buy his products? Just because he’s made a good game, I’m not supposed to feel insulted? The thing is, I’m weak, I’m human, I’m not a robot. I feel very insulted by things like Proposition 8, and by people who consider homosexuals as some kind of inferior sub-race. Therefore, how should I be able to ignore it?

Let me paint you a picture, perhaps you’ll understand it from a different perspective. If you were dark skinned, and the developer had made a joke about filthy negros and believing that they shouldn’t be able to interact with good, everyday people, and the developer had said (still not completely seriously) that it was better back when they didn’t have the same rights, would you feel offended? Would you think it’s okay buying the game?

You have to put things into perspective, an insult like that is an insult on a very personal level. It’s like mocking someone for a handicap (and I’ve been there, too, not all that fun I’ll tell you), it’s just not cool. And if people choose to not buy a game from a person because they feel insulted by that person, then I don’t see the problem. If EA came out and said something that offended me on such a personal level, I wouldn’t buy anything any more from them, either. And believe me, I’m pretty good at boycotting even large companies, I’m probably one of the few people who’s actually stuck by their claim to not have bought anything by Ubisoft due to that annoying DRM.

Yeah, it does. I’m sorry, my comment came across as “this is not an important issue” when I really meant it more as a “If I allowed games to be tarred by the sins of their developers, I’d never buy games.”

It’s a fun game, was my point. If you don’t like the guy who made it, you can always buy it for a penny, which would probably actually cost him money for the transaction fees.

It strikes me odd that you would make a choice of purchase not on the quality of the product, but on the conflict of yours and the product creator’s personal opinions and beliefs.
If you did so with everything you purchased, you’d soon run out of things to buy.
Do you not see how silly you act? “Oh, he likes the colour black! That is an evil colour! I will have nothing to do with him!” is your whole argument.
You may believe that by taking such an active stand against the proponents of Proposition 8, you are advancing society to a better and fairer state, but you are actually only making matters worse by denying a man the freedom to hold and express his own personal beliefs and opinions.
If society is advanced in THAT way, soon people will not be able to express their own thoughts from fear of censure and harassment from other members of the society whose views differ from theirs.

@pupsikaso
“If you did so with everything you purchased, you’d soon run out of things to buy.
Do you not see how silly you act? “Oh, he likes the colour black! That is an evil colour! I will have nothing to do with him!” is your whole argument.”

I like how you manage to combine the “slippery slope” and “strawman” fallacies so elegantly in a single paragraph.

“You may believe that by taking such an active stand against the proponents of Proposition 8, you are advancing society to a better and fairer state, but you are actually only making matters worse by denying a man the freedom to hold and express his own personal beliefs and opinions.”

We aren’t denying him ANYTHING! We are not “censuring” or “harassing” him as you claim. He is totally free to say this things. We are totally free to choose not to buy his things because we don’t want to sponsor someone who is actively working to remove our rights (or rights of people we care about).

Thanks for bringing this up Duck, even though I understand this wasn’t your intention. I almost bought this scumbag’s game.

What exactly would count as data? Seems like if you don’t just want to take peoples word for it that they didn’t make the choice and don’t feel they could change simply by choosing to then you’re getting into some really deep worries about choice, free will and determinism.

There are always insufferable idiots when it comes to this topic, that’s why I hate discussing it, and yes I’m bloody touchy about it because of the aforementioned insufferable idiots. The thing is, you’ll find such idiots everywhere, and when one goes into a discussion like this, one definitely has to expect to find them here.

Right, so let’s see: I choose to suffer idiots, put up with persecution, and place myself in a situation where I’d need to fight for equal rights? I don’t think so. What you’re claiming is like saying ethnic minorities choose to be ethnic minorities, and hey, of course they do, right? I mean, they could magically change their race over night, and you don’t have the empirical data to disprove that, because no one’s really bothered researching it properly.

Well, being gay is like that. You’ll have insufferable idiots who’ll tell you that you chose to be what you are, and that you weren’t born that way. Right. Because we can choose our body, our biochemical configuration, we can choose the way our brain works, and we have complete understanding and dominion over our own bodies. Right? Except, no, we don’t. We’re still in the dark ages, we’re still only beginning to figure things out.

If a large body of people who are gay are telling you that it wasn’t their choice, and you disagree and think of them all as incorrect fools, well, I’m sorry to say but the truth of the matter is that they’re probably all right, since they have life experience with something that you can’t even begin to imagine, let alone comprehend. Therefore, I find it insulting when trumped up people like you think it’s your place to dictate about something they don’t understand at all. It just makes you look clueless, foolish, and yes, like an insufferable idiot.

How does Science work? In the simplest terms: It checks a basis to see if something is correct, then it continues testing until it confirms that a theory is true in all cases, then it’s submitted to peer review. Well, since every gay person knows that they were born the way they were, since every gay person knows that denying their homosexuality only leads to misery (check the ‘net, there are plenty of stories about that) and near suicidal depression, and since we’ve all come to the conclusion, collectively, that this isn’t a choice then frankly I think that’s enough evidence right there.

And if it isn’t, then… well, let’s go around telling ethnic minorities that it’s their fault for being ethnic minorities, because they could just choose to be caucasian, eh?

Just because something is happening that you don’t personally have a clue about or understand, it doesn’t mean that that something isn’t happening. You don’t choose something like this, believe me. When all kids start looking at girls in a new way, but you aren’t, it makes life very hard, because people aren’t at all empathic or understanding.

You can have your little fight against reality, but thankfully I think the vast majority of people know better, since we don’t go around telling people that any physical differences they have (just because those physical differences aren’t understood) are choice. Eventually, the exact reason for why people turn out gay will be confirmed, and you’ll look like quite the fool. In fact, I all ready remember reading something on that topic a bit back, and I rather wish I could remember the full details of the article to show you.

But yes, you’re talking about something you don’t understand, so if anyone should just give their lips a rest, it’s you.

The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

This proclamation was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Well I’m not a Mormon but I’ll agree that if you are a Mormon (as I assume you are) then you are justified in believing that. However that only gets you the first step. That gets you that heterosexual families are good and important to the fabric of society and should be maintained. Seems to me that to be justified as being in favour of proposition 8 on the basis of that then you have to also believe that allowing legally binding homosexual unions to be termed marriages will damage the place of the heterosexual family in society. That seems like a very big step to me. I can agree that heterosexual families are important but I can’t see why allowing homosexuals to get married would result in fewer happy heterosexual families.

Put it this way (with apologies to Pimorte above), I don’t feel I have a choice about the fact I’m predominantly heterosexual so giving me the choice of whether to form a homosexualcentric family or a heterosexualcentric family isn’t going to influence me away from my choice of wishing to form a heterosexualcentric family and I believe that probably holds true for most people. The only people who are going to give up on heterosexual marriage just because they’re given the choice are those people who would not have found happiness in a heterosexual marriage. I don’t believe any good healthy heterosexualcentric families will be destroyed or not formed by giving people the choice. Seems likely that the average quality of a heterosexualcentric family will be increased by giving people the choice because people will be entering into heterosexual relationships for the right reasons rather than because of the immense social pressure they are currently under to conform. That should lower divorce rates and strengthen the heterosexualcentric family, no?

I know who the bigots are, now, here, which is nice. I also know who the open-minded people are. I further know who those who’re masquerading as something nice and still supporting bigotry are. I’m never going to forget that bigotry and hatred can have a silver tongue, they can be clever, they can seem loving and caring, but you always have to cut straight to what they support, because that’s the only truth of the matter.

To those who’ve actually said something in support of gay people, you’ve earned a great deal of respect from me. For those who were intelligent enough to realise that being gay isn’t a choice, well, those people deserve even more. It’s really not fun having to get involved in something like this, whenever it comes up, but you know… being a gay person myself, I can’t just roll over on my back, submit, and say that this is all okay, fine, well, and good.

Discrimination based on what a person is, whether it’s handicapped, homosexual, bisexual, straight, religious, an ethnic minority, or whatever else is about the most uncool aspect of humanity. I’m not saying that we have to like everyone, I’ll never make that claim, and I know that’s impossible, but what I am saying is that at least we should be able to respect everyone as an equal, with all the rights and privileges one is entitled to as a human being, no matter what they are, who they are, or where they live.

And to be honest, regardless of whomever it was, even if it was someone I completely despised, I’d still fight as hard for their rights as I would for my own, because that’s the sort of person I am. I also think that’s the only sort of thinking that will move us forward as a race. There should be a push for equality, for all, and the support of inequality, especially in the field of civil rights, should be considered an outmoded concept.

You can think of people as lesser if you want, but if you’d ever try to deny someone rights based on your feelings, whether you like or dislike them, whether you feel they’re lesser, then you’re a horrible human being. What I will say is this: You have your own opinions, fine, great, fantastic, share them with the world, be proud of them. Just keep that shit out of laws and liberties.

Hear, hear.
I agree with pretty much all of that. I just hope you’ve got me down as “open minded” rather than “silver tongued”. :/
For my part I have come to believe you are a good man fighting a just fight to the best of his ability and I salute you for that. I’m not sure there is anything better to be.
I was at least boardering on playing devil’s advocate quite a lot in this discussion so let me finish by for a moment being perfectly clear what my own views are: –
I’m a strong believer in equality across all sexualities, genders, sexes, races, religions, nationalities etc.
I do not believe anyone has a choice regarding their sexuality any more than their gender or race.
I’m a strong believer in fair, reasoned, open dialogue which is why I’ll sometimes jump with both in with both feet and play devil’s advocate or even argue both sides of the same case to try and help each side see the others possible points of view.
I believe foolishness should always be countered by reason rather than condemnation. I believe condemnation should always be a last resort when dialogue has proved completely pointless.
I emphatically do not support Proposition 8 which I consider to enshrine an unjustified semantic discrimination that will only breed further hatred and discrimination. And yes, I do believe most of it’s supporters are bigots but I’m not willing to take support of proposition 8 as proof of bigotry.
I do support the LGBT community in their struggle for equality.
I do not support bigotry of any kind but I will always try to reason with and engage with the reasoning of those who appear bigoted and try to encourage other to do the same. I believe this is the best way to counter such prejudices.
Finally, in spite of the fact I’m unwilling to condemn him as a bigot, I do not support Mike Smith. Mike seems to me to be at best foolish and at worst bigoted but I’m the sort of person who will always think the best of people so I currently believe Mike Smith is foolish rather than a bigoted.

The whole “homosexuality is a choice” thing has always completely baffled me. I certainly didn’t choose to be attracted to women, I just am. It seems to me that in order to hold the “it’s a choice” position you’d have to be attracted to both sexes to begin with, or potentially attracted to one but pretending to be attracted to the other. Either way, the “it’s a choice” argument always says more to me about the person making it than it does about the nature of sexual preference. If it wasn’t almost always accompanied by a load of hatred and bigotry I’d genuinely feel sorry for those people.

I bought this game without knowing any of this Prop 8 stuff. I rather enjoyed it for being inexpensive and pretty fun. I probably wouldn’t even have cared to look at it had I known about this Prop 8 stuff.

Finding out about it now, it makes me feel sort of odd. I got to enjoy this fun game without thinking about bigoted campaigns and politics. I’ll certainly have more on my mind if I ever play anymore of the game’s content.

@wulf
You could have avoided that huge wall of text if you actually chose to read the second paragraph I wrote.

@perseus
A large qualitative+quantitative study based around highly structured interviews with people about their sexual development in their teenage years would be good to start off with. (The survey would be best if it were compulsory – such as ones commissioned under the name of the Australian Statistician.) Individual anecdotes should be starting points for bigger investigations, not substitutes for them.

@devin
Thanks, that’s the sort of response I like – a peak body is pretty good as far as reliability goes. To be frank, I am a little concerned since that paper lead with a values statement rather than research summaries. Unfortunately I don’t have time to check the references in that paper – and they don’t make it easy to work with since they have no in-text citations :(

I had been considering writing my own personal views on homosexual development and tendencies. Given two out of three respondents to me ascribed views to me that I didn’t express (and even explicitly contradicted), I’m not sure that would be a very productive exercise :(

And that’s your opinion, and you’re free to exercise it.
Unless you’re trolling, in which case that’s not your opinion.
And If you’re not trolling, then me saying that must have sounded pretty patronising, but that’s a risk I’m totally cool in taking.

Anyway, does it really matter if sexuality is genetic or developed from your surroundings?
It seems to me (and I’m going to play the gay card here) as a gay, that it matters about as much as whether liking scotch is nature or nurture’s fault.